My two new Delirious? CDs got here today. I got their most recent studio release The Mission Bell (2005) and King of Fools (1998), the first release the produced under their current name. (Before then they were part-time musicians called The Cutting Edge Band, because they were the worship band for a youth outreach called Cutting Edge.) They are best known in the US market for the 1995 worship song “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”.

Having been very impressed with World Service (2003), I was hoping I would not be let down. Both CDs are very good. More depressingly excellent musicianship. I’m currently listening to the radio chart singles off of King of Fools. I listened to the whole thing, unaware of which tracks had made the UK single chart. Now I’m going back to see if they stand out among the others, because the whole album is impressive.

I don’t buy new music very often. I tend to play the same CDs in the car. Until I got World Service, for months I have rotated between The Best Worship Songs… Ever, Geoff Moore Greatest Hits, and Rich Mullins Songs. I don’t often find new music that’s worth buying. I will probably end up getting just about the entire Delirious? back catalogue.

They are no longer nearly microscopic. The Artemia nyos in the little tank on the kitchen windowsill can be seen from across the room. Some of them may be as long as the nail on my little finger. They are hard to measure accurately, as they aren’t particularly keen to tread water.

The monkeys are no doubt thriving due the care and attention of Mrs H. She has supplied prescribed amounts of Mating Power, Growth Food, and Plasma III.

I have stopped to watch them for long enough to see if they engage in any sort of social or family activities. I still haven’t seen any baseball games or picnics. The Mating Powder and the emergence of significant numbers of additional tiny monkeys would seem to indicate that the primary social and/or family activity is monkey sex, though I can’t claim to have actually observed this myself. Admittedly it isn’t something I’ve been trying to observe, so perhaps it is happening right in front of me and I am unaware. But then there are long period of time when the room is dark and no one is watching.

The day after two car bombs we found in London, both by providential observers, a blazing car has been driven at the main terminal building of Glasgow Airport.

It appears to me to be a car bomb gone “wrong”. The car was already on fire and one of the occupants was on fire, jumped from the car, but was stopped by members of the public until he was detained by the police. The other was pulled from the car by police, even as he was trying to fight them off. Both were of South Asian ethnicity.
The car never had the chance to explode and as far as news reports indicate, no one was killed or injured. So far this week, even when they’ve made an attack, terrorists have been unsuccessful.

The terrorists will have to realise this ain’t Bagdad. We won’t be cowed by their bullying.

The Red Cross has a policy of neutrality, so it does not make statements with regard to the various nefarious regimes around the world. It is has finally found a situation so bad that it has found it necessary to denounce the repeated violations of international humanitarian law. It does not surprise me that the regime in question is the ruling junta in Burma.

The statement issued by the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross , Jakob Kellenberger, particularly addresses the issue of portering:

Under the prison system set up by the government, every year thousands of detainees have been forced to support the armed forces by serving as porters. This institutionalized and widespread practice has frequently led to the abuse of detainees and exposed them to the dangers of armed conflict. Many detainees used as porters have suffered from exhaustion and malnutrition and been subjected to degrading treatment. Some have been murdered.

It has also addressed the destruction of the economy and acts of violence:

The Myanmar armed forces have committed repeated abuses against men, women and children living in communities affected by armed conflict along the Thai-Myanmar border. These have included the large-scale destruction of food supplies and of means of production. The armed forces have severely restricted the population’s freedom of movement in these areas, making it impossible for many villagers to work in their fields. This has had a significant impact on the economy, aggravating an already precarious humanitarian situation. Furthermore, the armed forces have committed numerous acts of violence against people living in these areas, including murder, and subjected them to arbitrary arrest and detention. They have also forced villagers to directly support military operations or to leave their homes.

On top of all this, the authorities refuse to talk seriously to Red Cross officials and directly restrict its work.

A shopkeeper has been fined £250 and given a criminal record because he fought back when he was attacked by shoplifters.

Jacob Smyth chased three youths out of his hardware shop in Penzance, Cornwall, when he was set upon. When he was kicked in the groin by one of the hooded youths who had stolen cans of spray paint Mr Smyth hit back.

Police issued fixed penalty tickets to the shoplifters but charged Mr Smyth and a colleague with assault.

Yesterday he pleaded guilty to assault at Truro Magistrates’ Court. He claimed after the hearing that he had been advised to plead guilty because otherwise he could have faced a six month prison sentence.

The court was told that Mr Smyth, a father of three, caught the youths stealing the spray cans in October last year. Two of them turned on him and he was kicked in his groin just weeks after a vasectomy operation. He retaliated and punched 18-year-old Craig Spiller to the ground.

So if you are ever attacked two-on-one and kicked in the groin, you must turn the other testicle. Do not defend yourself, or you will face a criminal record.

I’ve been getting my guitar out for a few minutes over the last couple of day, limbering up the fingers for no particularly good reason. I had thought about taking it into school for the last week and maybe playing for some of my lessons. This worked well in one previous school, but given some of the groups I have right now, I sense the strong possibility of more than one Matthew 7:6 experience.

So I’ve just sat on the bed and played a few old tunes. I haven’t written anything new in years and years. After I was in Texas, I thought I would try to come up with a new worship number to send off to friends in Gonzales and to anyone else who might want it, but nothing has happened yet.

So I just strum away gently, mostly because I don’t even own a pick at the moment. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have imagined the time when I was plectrum-free. But then I never would have imagine I would be where I am now.

For some reason, I browsed into the site of one the Christian music festivals happening around the UK this summer. They have links to the scheduled artists. I started at the bottom of the page and worked my way up. I clicked on one acoustic artist and listened to some of the stuff on her website. I was not impressed and thought maybe I’m not as bad as I always imagine (and usually confirm when I listen to old tapes) if she’s playing at that festival. Then I listened to a few more artists and bands and sure enough, I’m pretty crap by comparison.

Sometimes I think that if I could surround myself with some decent musicians, it might make some fairly decent songs sound fairly decent again. After all, I play some of my tunes and I can still hear The ad hoc Band in my head. I hear the drums and the lead guitar fills, rather than (or at least on top of) some sloppy rhythm work that reveals most of my 27 years of playing have been wasted.

But most of the time I think my day has passed and music is a young man’s game.

Gordon Brown has announced his Cabinet. In addition to moving or removing every Cabinet Minister except Des Browne at Defence (though he’s been given the Scotland portfolio as well), Brown without the “e” has chopped, changed, and renamed some departments.

This is not particularly uncommon with incoming Governments, though I have to wonder how quickly new premises can be secured, stationery and phone number changed, and civil servants shuttled around. However, one thing has caught me quite by surprise and I’m not exactly sure how can even work constitutionally. I say that realising that Labour has heretofore defied just about anything else that would have otherwise seemed unconstitutional.

Though it hasn’t been mentioned in any news report that I have seen, I was looking at the official list of He Majesty’s Government on the Parliament website and discovered that Jack Straw is Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. I knew that prisons were being shifted into the same department as the courts and away from the Home Office. The Lord Chancellor is no longer the head of the judiciary under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. He isn’t even speaker of the House of Lords anymore. But he’s still the Lord Chancellor.